I have an "old" HTC Wizard, Windows Mobile 5 PDA phone. I got it as part of purchasing an O2 talk-plan about two and half years ago. Conchango would rather I was part of the company mobile scheme. I want to keep my phone though. I prefer the PDA phone to the company Smartphone and frankly it is a perfectly good device (albeit tatty) that does not need consigning to the bin (recycle). But there is a rub.
O2 quite rightly protected their commercial interests of massively subsidising the purchase of the device by "locking" it so that it would only work on their network. This ensured that the shiny device I wanted drove profit by making calls on their network. You could argue that the contract I signed ensured a minimum revenue and that they did not need to lock the device, and with a lower value contract they would have subsidised the phone less.
Getting to the point. O2 have certainly more than recouped the cost of subsidising the device, but I am stuck with two legacies: a device that will only work on O2 and an old version of Windows Mobile that has not been patched for well over two years. My path of least resistance to a Windows Mobile 6.1 device is to throw this one away and sign up for a new contract.
Wouldn't it be nice to legitimately have the phone ROM upgraded by easily downloading software from O2 and, at contract end, have the phone unlocked should I wish to use the device on another network? This might reduce the excessive demand for device turnover...
I don't suppose this is significantly in anyone's interest though. Sparkly new devices and features shift hardware, phone contracts and calls. Mobile phones can be recycled is the easy answer. The device will ultimately fail and need recycling anyway right? Therefore extending the life of a device doesn't decrease the number of devices in circulation it just extracts more value from those raw materials and puts off the inevitable.
Assuming that the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of a device is longer than the MTTR (Mean Time To Renew) and that recycling is far from 100% efficient then it is reasonable that the current model does in fact over drive the demand on raw materials and manufacturing - which is not so green. For example if the MTBF of a phone is 5 years and the typical MTTR is 12 months then I only "need" 1 phone every 5 years. However, the current model might encourage me to consume 5 phones. If recycling is 10% efficient then every 5 years I am consuming .9 of a phone as opposed to 4.5 phones. Those numbers were plucked out of... thin air.
As I said, I can't see it being in anyone's big interest to do this - even mine really; after all this phone is a bit tatty! However if the rate of phone hardware innovation were to slow gradually (which it is isn't it?) this would slow desire for the latest device, meaning people would be less likely to change their phones and contracts; which could in turn be more attractively priced due to less subsidising and would ultimately be a bit more green. Where does that leave the device manufacturers? Diversifying into software and services whilst trying even harder to innovate.